National shutdown
Internet Services
After a break of a week, the Iraq government resumed their series of exam-related shutdowns ordered by government authorities to curb cheating during high school exams period. The shutdowns are expected to continued on July 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15 in 2023. As we have repeatedly written about here on Pulse, Internet shutdowns cause great harm to a country’s economy and society, and are in our opinion NOT the appropriate mechanism to cope with potential exam cheating.
- Total Duration 4 hours
Iraq
- Population
- 47,020,774
Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Partly Free
Local impact
After a break of a week, the Iraq government resumed their series of exam-related shutdowns ordered by government authorities to curb cheating during high school exams period. The shutdowns are expected to continued on July 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15 in 2023. As we have repeatedly written about here on Pulse, Internet shutdowns cause great harm to a country’s economy and society, and are in our opinion NOT the appropriate mechanism to cope with potential exam cheating.
Related documentation
Below is a screenshot of the Iraq High School exam schedule for June and July 2023 as per the Iraqi Ministry of Education page on Facebook.
Other supporting information
Measurements from the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Tech shows the shutdown on 4 July, the sixth in this series of exam-related shutdowns. It is a similar drop to the previous shutdowns, beginning at 01:00 and ending at 05:00 (UTC).
The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) shows that they did not receive any data from any their test probes in Iraq for a longer period of time.
Social media
12th grade #exams have started in #Iraq, which means another ~5 hour #Internet #shutdown has occurred in Iraq. 12th grade exams are set for June 21, 22 ,24, 25, 26, 27; July 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15.
— IODA (@IODA_live) June 21, 2023
Iraq Internet connectivity in near realtime:https://t.co/3SrU04E7e8 pic.twitter.com/Uz9DFhHQI4